Crossword clues for gadfly
gadfly
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Breeze \Breeze\, Breeze fly \Breeze" fly`\, n. [OE. brese, AS. bri['o]sa; perh. akin to OHG. brimissa, G. breme, bremse, D. brems, which are akin to G. brummen to growl, buzz, grumble, L. fremere to murmur; cf. G. brausen, Sw. brusa, Dan. bruse, to roar, rush.] (Zo["o]l.) A fly of various species, of the family Tabanid[ae], noted for buzzing about animals, and tormenting them by sucking their blood; -- called also horsefly, and gadfly. They are among the largest of two-winged or dipterous insects. The name is also given to different species of botflies. [Written also breese and brize.]
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
also gad-fly, 1620s, "fly which bites cattle," probably from gad (n.) "goad, metal rod," here in the sense of "stinger;" but the sense is entangled with gad (v.) "rove about" (on the notion, perhaps, of the insect's power of flight or of the restlessness of animals plagued by them), and another early meaning of gadfly was "someone who likes to go about, often stopping here and there" (1610s). Sense of "one who irritates another" is from 1640s (equivalent of Latin oestrus; see estrus). "In strictness, only the females are gadflies, the males being smaller and quite inoffensive, living on juices of plants" [Century Dictionary]. Earlier bot-fly, from bot "skin parasite" (late 15c.).
Wiktionary
n. 1 Any dipterous insect of the family Oestridae, commonly known as botfly. 2 A horsefly: any of various species of fly, of the family Tabanidae, noted for buzzing about animals and sucking their blood. 3 One who upsets the status quo by posing upsetting or novel questions, or attempts to stimulate innovation by proving an irritant. 4 (context pejorative English) One who merely irritates without making useful suggestions. 5 (context slang English) A bloodsucker
WordNet
Wikipedia
A gadfly is a fly that annoys horses and other livestock, usually a horse-fly or a botfly.
Gadfly can also refer to:
- Gadfly (social), a person who upsets the status quo
- A practitioner of gadfly ethics, one of the competing theories about how to pursue goodness
- Gadfly (database), a relational database in the Python programming language
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The Gadfly, a novel about revolution in Italy published in 1897 by Irish author Ethel Lilian Voynich
- The Gadfly (1928 film), a Soviet film based on the novel, directed by Kote Marjanishvili
- The Gadfly (1955 film), a Soviet film based on the novel, directed by Aleksandr Fajntsimmer
- The Gadfly (1980 film), a Soviet film based on the novel, directed by Nikolai Mashchenko
- The Gadfly (Zhukov opera), 1928 Russian opera by Mikhail Zhukov
- The Gadfly (opera), 1958 a Russian opera by Soviet composer Antonio Spadavecchia
- The Gadfly Suite, a musical suite by Dmitri Shostakovich for the 1955 film
- Gadfly (mythology), sent by Hera to torment Io in Greek mythology
- The Education Gadfly, the weekly e‑bulletin of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute
- Gadfly Online, an online and print magazine
-
, four ships of the Royal Navy
- SA‑11 "Gadfly", the NATO reporting name for a Russian surface-to-air missile system "9K37 Buk"
- The Gadfly (Adelaide) (1906–1909), an Australian literary magazine produced by C. J. Dennis
- The Gadfly (album), an album by Christian hip-hop group LPG
Gadfly is a relational database management system written in Python. Gadfly is a collection of Python modules that provides relational database functionality entirely implemented in Python. It supports a subset of the standard RDBMS Structured Query Language (SQL).
Gadfly runs wherever Python runs and supports client/ server on any platform that supports the standard Python socket interface. The file formats used by Gadfly for storage are cross-platform—a gadfly database directory can be moved from Windows 95 to Linux using a binary copying mechanism and gadfly will read and run the database.
It supports persistent databases consisting of a collection of structured tables with indices, and a large subset of SQL for accessing and modifying those tables. It supports a log-based recovery protocol which allows committed operations of a database to be recovered even if the database was not shut down in a proper manner (i.e., in the event of a CPU or software crash, [but not in the event of a disk crash]). It also supports a TCP/IP Client/Server mode where remote clients can access a Gadfly database over a TCP/IP network (such as the Internet) subject to configurable security mechanisms.
Since Gadfly depends intimately on the kw Parsing package it is distributed as part of the kwParsing package, under the same copyright.
Gadfly allows Python programs to store, retrieve and query tabular data without having to rely on any external database engine or package. It provides an in-memory relational database style engine for Python programs, complete with a notion of a "committed, recoverable transaction" and "aborts".
The gadfly, a type of fly plaguing cattle, typically ones belonging to either the family Tabanidae ( horse-flies) or the family Oestridae ( bot flies), appears in Greek mythology as a tormenter to Io, the heifer maiden. Zeus lusts after Io and eventually turns her into a white heifer to hide her from his jealous wife, Hera. Hera is not fooled, and demands Io as a gift from Zeus. She then assigns Argus, the 100-eyed monster, the job of guarding Io. Hermes (ordered by Zeus) kills Argus and frees Io. When Hera finds out, she sends a gadfly to torment and sting Io, forcing her to wander farther and farther away from home.
The gadfly also plays a role in the myth of how Bellerophon loses Pegasus and the gods' favor. Bellerophon attempts to ride Pegasus to the top of Mt. Olympus, arrogantly believing himself worthy of entering the realm of the gods. Zeus is enraged by the human's audacity and sends a gadfly to sting Pegasus. The winged horse is startled and he rears backward. Bellerophon loses his grip and falls back to Earth. Athena spares his life by causing him to land on soft ground, but he becomes blind and wanders the earth alone until he dies, hated by both men and gods.
Usage examples of "gadfly".
The Odynerus has for its instinctive mission to arrest the excessive multiplication of a lucerne weevil, no less than twenty-four of whose grubs are necessary to rear the offspring of the brigand, and nearly sixty gadflies are sacrificed to the growth of a single Bembex.
Meantime Eros passed unseen through the grey mist, causing confusion, as when against grazing heifers rises the gadfly, which oxherds call the breese.
Bob Packwood Is the Republican Gadfly Who Keeps Stinging the President.
In due succession there came "Where the GadFlies Cease from Troubling," "The Haven of the Herd," and "A-dream in Dairyland," studies of walnut trees and dun cows.
Hamid-Jones's father-in-law was grayer after the years of shepherding the dhimmi communities of four star systems to their new promised land, arranging transport and acting as Aziz's gadfly in getting a fleet of their own built in the Sultan's shipyards, but he was still a powerfully built, vigorous man who looked as if he would go on forever.
Besides which there stirred not the least breath of wind, and flies and gadflies did swarm in prodigious quantity, which, settling upon her excoriate flesh, stung her so shrewdly that 'twas as if she received so many stabs with a javelin, and she was ever restlessly feeling her sores with her hands, and cursing herself, her life, her lover, and the scholar.
Only this: that what with the heat of the sun above and the floor beneath her, and the scarification of her flesh in every part by the flies and gadflies, that flesh, which in the night had dispelled the gloom by its whiteness, was now become red as madder, and so besprent with clots of blood, that whoso had seen her would have deemed her the most hideous object in the world.
Big-time gamblers and top-dollar prostitutes rubbed shoulders (and other things) with Chicago's leading social gadflies, most of whom were looking for one last thrill on the way to senility or a first thrill on the road to adulthood.